In America's earliest days, there were barn-raising parties in which neighbors helped each other build up their farms. Today, in some churches, there are debt liquidation revivals in which parishioners chip in to free each other from growing credit card debts that are driving American families to bankruptcy and desperation. IN DEBT WE TRUST is the latest film from Danny Schechter, "The News Dissector," director of the internationally distributed and award-winning WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception), an expose of the media's role in the Iraq War. The Emmy-winning former ABC News and CNN producer's new hard-hitting documentary investigates why so many Americans are being strangled by debt. It is a journalistic confrontation with what former Reagan advisor Kevin Phillips calls "Financialization"--the "powerful emergence of a debt-and-credit industrial complex." While many Americans may be "maxing out" on credit cards, there is a deeper story: power is shifting into fewer hands.....with frightening consequences.

Those were the sentiments of D.V. from Modesto, CA, concerning her and her husband’s job situation. She was an eligibility case manager and he was a company representative; both were laid off in 2009. Since then, “My husband and I went from making $150K a year to scraping out (if we're lucky) $24K a year. Don't get me wrong, we are lucky to have even that, but it IS a stark reality to have fallen so far so fast."

Another stark reality is the fact that the jobs market has stalled and job creation has fallen to its lowest level of 2011. The June 2011 employment report contained plenty of bad news; only 18,000 jobs were created, the unemployment rate increased to 9.2 percent, and hourly wages and hours worked both fell slightly. The job creation revisions for April and May were both to the downside.

Long-term unemployment remained at historically elevated levels as those out of work for more than 52 weeks increased by 34,000 from a year earlier to 4,364,000, or 30.3 percent of all unemployed. A large part of that 4,364,000 includes 2,039,000 unemployed who have been out of work for 99 weeks or longer, an increase of 105,000 from the previous month.This is the first time since the 99-week statistic has been tracked by the BLS that it has exceeded the two million mark.

Ninety-niner (exhausted all unemployment benefits) Brenda McFadden, was a corporate travel consultant for more than 20 years, but she's finding that the job market can be unforgiving. Has she seen job market improvements? “Not at all. My state is still over 10% (unemployment). It frustrates me to see the US throwing money we don't have to outside entities, i.e. funding wars and uprisings etc. and yet there are no funds to continue support of the Long Term unemployed during this monumental economic downturn (supporting them would be good for the economy in that they turn around and spend it not hoard it). 99ers especially, are ignored and forgotten and are being swept under the national rug.”

While unemployment is at historically high levels considering the economy is supposed to be in recovery mode, the tragedy of long-term unemployment is especially troublesome. The longer a person remains jobless the more difficult it is to find new work. Many prospective employers often disparage the long-term unemployed for being lazy, having out-of-date skills and not having the confidence to step into a new position.

“And on top of that some companies -- including PMG Indiana, Sony Ericsson and retailers nationwide -- have explicitly barred the unemployed or long-term unemployed from certain job openings, outright telling them in job ads that they need not apply.

D.V. from Modesto feels the sting of long-term job rejection, “Unemployment is still above 18% locally and I still don't even get returned phone calls for minimum-wage jobs.”

The jobs crisis can be especially difficult for older workers. “At the present age of 64 and having been out of work for the last 1 3/4 years, I do a lot less, eat much less, get a special discount at the YMCA, shop on senior discount days, walk a lot more, try to combine trips to avoid using too much fuel,” writes Thomas Rainey of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. “The job market for seniors has always been rather bleak; it seems it has really gotten a lot worse in these last few years.”

Brenda McFadden believes that new laws need to be put in place discouraging discriminatory practices that affect the long-term unemployed. “I would like to see strong legislation and penalties to employers who practice discrimination, age related or employment status, and also see relaxed credit reviews when looking at the unemployed for hire because what may have been good or great credit once may be no longer...doesn't mean they won't make a good employee.”

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you’re done... for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.

After a U.S. Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Postreported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. “We do a lot of traveling -- a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently. This global presence -- in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged -- provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The Rise of the Military’s Secret Military

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight U.S. service members died, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate. Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army’s “Green Berets” and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States’ most specialized and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal “kill/capture” campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls "an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine." This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.

Nick Davies is a British journalist and filmmaker who began his career in the mid-1970s. An accomplished freelancer and special correspondent for the Guardian, he is the author of five books, including Flat Earth News, a withering and widely-praised critique of the British press. His forthcoming sixth book will concern the latest and arguably most important scoop of his career -- the phone hacking scandal that has rocked News Corp. to its foundation. Davies met with Media Matters in New York to discuss his scoop and why he thinks "Murdoch has a lot to answer for."

How long were you on the phone hacking story before it broke open?

I started looking at it in January 2008. At first, it was just one project I was working on of many. The first story didn't appear until July 2009, after 18 months of working on it. It was a big story that caused a huge reaction in the UK. Then I began tackling it full time -- producing some 80 stories over a two-year period.

When did you begin to suspect there was something big under the surface?

Very early on. During the 18-month period when I was working on it part-time, I learned enough to know the truth. Not only were there a lot of journalists doing a lot of illegal things within the Murdoch organization, the former editor [of the paper in question] happened to have gone to work for the man about to become the prime minister. Instantly, the significance of the story is raised a level. And then you have the fact that the largest police force in the country had clearly failed to investigate, or inform all of the victims. And I found out early on that one of the hacking victims was the deputy prime minister -- a man who knew about economic and military secrets. It was also clear early on that the members of the Press Complaints Commission, the press regulatory body, failed to do their jobs.

How is News International different from other media companies operating on Fleet Street?

News International has been rather unlucky because they're the ones who got caught. But lots of other newspapers on Fleet Street have been doing the same thing. But the story has become about the Murdochs because Rupert Murdoch is so peculiarly powerful. I think you could put a reasonable case together for saying he's the most powerful man in the world.

Do you think the Murdoch family was shocked to lose its immunity so suddenly?

In the United Kingdom, they had acquired so much power that nobody was interested in confronting them. So that is why Scotland Yard didn't investigate the hacking charges properly. That is why political leaders have been accommodating them. It reached a point where they said, "We can't run a government in this country unless he supports us, so we have to keep him on side." While the Guardianwas popping away on this story, even the rest of Fleet Street was reluctant to pursue it. There was a widespread fear of the old bugger. Which is very unhealthy. But nobody predicted the extent to which they would be defeated. What happened in July, after the Milly Dowler story, the scale of opposition was so great that there suddenly came this break-point where everyone could see he was being taken on. He lost the aura of invincibility. Everyone found their spinal columns, at last.

How would you describe his new stature in the U.K., post-scandal?

He presented this image to the Select Committee of a humble old man. Part of that was a PR construct designed to win sympathy. But I don't think that's the truth. Some people say he's finished, so tarnished that he'll never again have access to political power again. But I'm not sure that's true. Even though his reputation has suffered, he still has the objective tools of power. He still does own these media organizations. And therefore politicians will continue to try to accommodate him.